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You read that correctly. According to the Russian news agency Ria Novosti by way of the Huffington Post, a 25-year-old student in the Ukraine has been killed by an exploding stick of chewing gum.

 

"A loud pop was heard from the student's room," a police officer explained. "When his relatives entered the room they saw that the lower part of the young man's face had been blown off."

 

What might have caused the incident was the student apparently was working on an experiment and had covered the gum in a chemical solution before chewing it. The student had the unusual habit of dipping his chewing gum into citric acid. He liked his gum sour, I guess. Police believe the student may have confused the chemical packet of delicious and nutritious citric acid with an explosive.

 

While that may well be the explanation in the Ukraine, in comic books, this would definitely have been the work of some gimmick themed villain like the Joker or the Trickster.

 

Candy weapons are not new to comics. Perhaps the most famous candy powered character was Kandy King. No, not the despotic tyrant of Candy Land, but the Dial H for Hero character from House of Mystery # 160 (which reintroduced the world to Plastic Man!) King Kandy used all sorts of goofy candy-themed weapons like a lollipop bombs, exploding gumdrops, and licorice lariat. Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t a regular, rope lariat be better? I mean could you eat your way out of rope lariat? Of course, Kandy King was actually teenager Robby Reed, who was a good kid, transformed into the oddly dressed adult King Kandy, who has something against the standard spelling of “candy” despite the fact that in his world, his name had never been spelled. The worst thing Robby ever did was annoy the crap out of his readers by constantly shouting, “Sockamagee!” whatever the hell that means, so he surely would never blow the face off a Ukrainian college student.

Poor Carrie Prejean, you are another victim of the anti-Christian majority minority. You said, “No one came to my defense really.”

 

How true. How true. No one came to your defense really ... other than:

 

The people who applauded you when you gave your answer,

 

Donald Trump who said you could keep your job even after the Pageant Officials found that you had breached your contract,

 

The National Organization for Marriage who sang your praises and booked you at their events,

 

All the other groups who have hired you as a speaker for all those events you’ve been (not) going to,

 

The legion of right wing radio talk show hosts and all their devoted fans who called in and praised your bravery and devotion,

 

Every anchor and guest on Fox News including Sean Hannity who had you on his TV show right after the hoopla began and wrote the forward to your book,

 

Which reminds, the publishers of your book, who paid you big money to state your opinion again,

 

Umm, your family, I presume, like the sister you mentioned on Hannity who you said was disgusted by how you were treated,

 

And Jesus.

 

Jolly, Carrie, don’t any of those rich, powerful people count?

 

Not even Jesus?

Carrie Prejean wants us to know that her sex tape of her as a minor masturbating isn’t that bad a thing because she “loved and cared about” the guy she sent it to. And that when you think some guy “is the one,” it’s understandable that you’d do something like this. Even Hannity suggests that “a boyfriend you loved” is something that should be considered when we look at the act of creating such a recording.

 

So just to recap, according to Prejean and Hannity, loving and carrying about someone, who you think is the one, is a justification for creating and distributing child porn, but not for allowing consenting adults to marry each other if they are of the same gender.

 

Thanks for clearing that up, kids.

 

Amazon is having a having a sale on their science fiction material and in the 60% or more off section of the scifi sale section, they are selling The Lost Tomb of Jesus, described on the site thusly:

 

Product Description

The feature-length widescreen Director’s Cut of the Discovery Channel special – executive produced by James Cameron. In 1980, a bulldozer accidentally uncovered a first-century tomb in Jerusalem. Of the ten ossuaries (stone coffins) found inside, six bore inscriptions: Jesus son of Joseph, Maria, Mariamene (the name by which Mary Magdalene was known), Joseph, Matthew, and Judah son of Jesus. Dismissed by archaeologists as coincidence, the ossuaries were warehoused and forgotten. Twenty-five years later, filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and his team took a fresh look at this astounding cluster of New Testament names. Granted unparalleled access, they went in search of the ossuaries…and the lost tomb. What they found may well be the most controversial archaeological discovery of all time.

 

Features 80 minutes of exclusive bonus materials including:
Interviews with executive producer James Cameron and director Simcha Jacobovici
Expert Interviews: The Discovery 1980, Judeo Christians, The Early Christian Cluster of Evidence, The Sign of the Cross, The Chevron Symbol, Mariamne
The Recreations: Behind the Scenes
The Lost Tomb of Jesus Epilogue featuring James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici
Photo Gallery

Trailer

 

It’s right between Hunter X Hunter, Vol. 2, the manga based story of a boy who trains for his Hunter license that will allow him to hunt magical treasures, mythical beasts and even people, and Dreamscape, a film about psychics who battle in the realm of the President’s nightmares with the threat of a nuclear holocaust hanging in the balance.

 

Thank you, Amazon, for putting the Jesus myth in the same category! You are decades, if not centuries, ahead of your time. Prepare for the hate mail that I'm sure will end once you've explain that it's only there because it's producer, James Cameron, also directed The Terminator. Yep, Fox News and the wingnuts will completely fail to see an anti-Christian conspiracy.

 

Also super cool was that there were a lot of photos on the site for the recreations of biblical scenes that were included with the DVD. The recreation photos were entitled things like “Recreations - Jesus preaches in market,” “Recreations - Mother Mary & Mary Magdalene morn Jesus' death,” and “Recreations - Jesus' family and followers grieve, skeleton is prepared for ossuary” and then there was the photo captioned  "Recreations - Simcha directing Jesus."

 

 

 

I think we all remember that scene in Luke, chapter 12, were Simcha Jacobovici told Jesus to try the scene again but this time with more feeling. And it is great to see that it has been recreated for this DVD.

Those poor schmucks in the video above decided to disguise themselves during their break-in by scribbling over their features with a black marker. Shockingly, It didn’t work.

 

But dammit! This would have worked in a comic book! Hell, all you need a domino mask or a pair of glasses to fool your most intimate friends and family. Clark Kent worked around photographers and even as an anchor man for a while and no one spotted that he was also Superman who was constantly in the news!

 

Hell, you don’t even need glasses! Take a peek at the disguises of the original Flash and Doll Man!  The Flash’s disguise was a dopey metal hat that might keep the CIA from beaming their mind controlling messages into brain (Stop denying CIA! We all know that the Culinary Institute of America is really a front for our alien overlords!), but it would hardly fool people into thinking you weren’t who you are.

 

Doll Man’s disguise was short shorts! Granted, Doll Man’s legs might have been distracting and he was small, but I’ve been able to recognize dolls based on famous people I barely know, so I’m pretty sure I’d recognize my friend if he was doll-sized.

 

Of course, the worst is the original Black Condor who had nothing to disguise his identity except that his bare chest might have drawn the eye away from his face.  Additionally, when the Black Condor, Richard Grey, Jr., was unable to save Senator Thomas Wright, Richard just took over his identity and no one noticed. That’s right! Not only didn’t people notice that a U.S. Senator was replaced by some guy raised by condors, they didn’t notice that it was the same guy who was flying around the Capital Building even though he did nothing to conceal his identity except take his clothes off. One of the people who didn’t notice was Senator Thomas Wright’s fiancée, Wendy, who Richard also appropriated with the Senator Thomas Wright identity. I will remind you that the Black Condor was the hero of his comic and not repugnant identity thief and rapist.

 

So be proud scribble faced crooks! Sure, you were caught in part because you had no way to remove the indelible ink from you faces before you were confronted, but you stand in long and illustrious line of American heroes with terrible, terrible disguises! Things may look bad for you know, but remember, no one will recognize you as those dimwitted burglars when you get out of jail, clean faced, years from today!

 

But just to be on the safe side, I'd invest in a pair of glasses.

Ant-Man, the Wasp, Swarm, The Queen Bee, all of them control insects. And guys like The Bug-Eyed Bandit used mechanical insects in their nefarious comic book adventures. Now, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has been working with University of California, Berkeley to create remotely controlled cyborg insects!

 

 

 

 

Electrodes were implanted into the pupal stage of a beetle. That beetle grows to a winged adult, and scientists could fly it around a room, controlling its direction with a lab top!

 

DARPA hopes to create a Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) using this technology that could carry ... who knows what? Tiny spying microphones! Electromagnetic field generators to scramble computers! Poison darts! It’s the Defense Department!

 

Read the story here!

This guy may be the best person you will ever see.

 

You may have watched Danyl Johnson’s audition for X-Factor, a British talent contest. It deservedly got loads of hits. It got me watching the show via YouTube.

 

So less deservedly on the show are a pair of Irish twins, who on diva week covered Brittany’s Oops, I Did It Again, which you can see above. Let’s for a moment forget the terrible singing and dreadful dancing and concentrate on the that weird segment where one twin presents the other with the diamond necklace from Titanic, arguably the most famous love story this generation. So are they saying they are in love with each other? Or because the song is about fooling some guy into thinking you are in love with him, is this suggesting that one twin is tricking the other into thinking he’s in love with him? Did they just feel they had to do it because it was in the original video? And what do the garment racks and motorcycle outfits have to do with the song or their romance? Is this supposed to be campy? I don’t know what the fuck it’s supposed to be.

 

But it’s not that innocent.

Unless you’ve been living on an alternate Earth where news organizations concern themselves with actual news, you are familiar with “Balloon Boy,”  a.k.a. Falcon Heene, the six year old who supposedly flew away on a flying-saucer shaped,  experimental weather balloon and disappeared before the balloon landed. As it turns out, Falcon was hiding in box in his garage and the whole thing may have been a hoax cooked up by his attention seeking parents. On one interview, Wolf Blitzer asked why Falcon didn’t come out of his box when he heard his parents calling for him. Falcon couldn’t hear Wolf, so Falcon’s father asked him, and Falcon said, “Umm, you guys said that ... mmm ... we did this for the show.” More than a little fishy, eh? And watch how dad hems and haws while trying not ask his son what he meant by that later. He is soooooo afraid of the answer.

 

Anyway, this story sounds a lot like a comic book origin except in a comic the reason Falcon wasn’t on the balloon when it landed would have been that he’d gained the power of flight from being exposed to cosmic rays or was mistaken for an alien by a race of bird people (Thanagarians?) who gave him flight powers and he had to battle Nazi zeppelins! Seriously, named Falcon and accidentally flown into the stratosphere on a flying saucer shaped balloon? You can’t get much more comic booky than that.

 

In fact, it’s very similar to the origin of The Ray. In that Happy Terrill was in a weather balloon when something went wrong, and Happy had to climb out onto the balloon. He was struck by lightning and voila! The power of flight and light control. Happy’s son gained the same powers because ... well, apparently Happy had lightning in his sperm or something, which sounds like something you’d see in the BDSM section of Xtube.

This ticked me off, so I’m going to write about it; even though, I know I shouldn’t. It’ll just cause grief.

 

OK, in a Spider-Man comic, a guy called the Chameleon disguised himself as Peter Parker and had sexual encounter with Peter’s female roommate that may or may not have been actual sex. When asked if sex between the roommate and the disguised Chameleon was rape because the roommate did not know that she was sleeping with the Chameleon, the author said:

 

My understanding of the definition of rape is that it requires force or the threat of force, so no. Using deception to trick someone into granting consent isn’t quite the same thing.

Which is not to say it isn’t a horrible, evil, reprehensible thing that Chameleon did. He is a bad man.

He insults parapelegics[sic] and dips people in acid too.

 

Most people looking at the question seem to fall into two camps.

 

1. Those who say, “Sex by deception in NY does not constitute rape under NY law, so the author was correct, but the act was still despicably immoral.” (I would be in this group.)
2. Those who say “Even though NY does not call it rape and would not prosecute the act as rape, it is still a form of rape because it is sex without actual consent, no matter what the law says.”

As far as I’m concerned either stance is fine. Although I would absolutely take issue with someone saying the act was not immoral, no one appears to be saying that. Everyone is saying the act was despicable.

 

However, some people looking at responses say that the people responding in the first option above (“It’s not rape as it is defined but it’s still evil.”) are also saying one or more of the following:

 

1. Therefore, sex by this kind of deception is ethical
2. Therefore, sex by this kind of deception is not a big deal.
3. Therefore, sex by this kind of deception should not be illegal.

 

I haven't seen anyone support any of those "therefores," and I know I don't. I think the act, had it been real, would have been terribly unethical, a big deal, and should be illegal. Despite the fact that no one seems to be supporting any of the "therefores" hasn't stopped people from claiming that people support them. One of the people in the “You are claiming that therefore ...” camp is a person going by the name Seafire. Seafire writes:

 

kalinara: one last thing though, I am still not sure the place of legal analysis in this discussion.
I'd give 2 reasons:
1. Just b/c it doesn't meet the legal definition of rape doesn't mean that it isn't rape.
2. More importantly I find it pretty odd that we are willing to have a discussion/analysis on the issue. there have been so many murders in comics have they ever been legally analyzed? I doubt it.
I have a feeling that the only reason why the legal analysis is being used is to say, "Ah well its not legally rape therefore..."
And I would argue that this type of mixing and confusing of legal issues with moral issue that give lawyers the bad reputation that they have.

 

And continues:

 

Madthinker: okay so I give up: why the legal analysis? What purpose does it serve unless it is being used to somehow say, hey its NOT rape.
Why not a legal analysis of the different types of murder that have occurred in comics?
Why not a legal analysis of Black Cat's actions as a thief?
I love analysis of comics for new insights etc. But I am not sure what the purpose of the legal analysis of whether it was rape under the law was.
Okay let's contextualize this; an event occurs, that possibly is a crime. That happens alot in comics. The character has not asked for a lawyer, there is no court room involved, no police action... why the legal analysis?
Are you saying that the purpose of the legal analysis by various blogs of this comic was a lesson in law?
- Seafire, not attacking but genuinely perplexed

 Not attacking, she says. I’ll give you three guesses where this ends up. Keep watching:

 

Madthinker: And just to clarify, we are not even talking about an analysis that involves legal policy; i.e. should this type of situation be considered rape. This is plain and simple an IRAC analysis of a crime. If that is the case, why not IRAC other comic crimes? UNLESS the purpose of the IRAC analysis is to show legally it wasn't rape and therefore absolve Chameleon of his crime.
I personally am a little uncomfortable with the story-line but not as much as other ppl b/c it isn't a violent rape. As notintheface has mentioned in his blog there are other comic stories of this type of deceipt rape. And such stories are also common in folklore, fairy-tales and myths, so I beleive that they have a purpose and reason for existence. That being said I just find it perplexing that we are IRAC-ing this issue. Obviously ppl are not mad over whether it is legally rape or not but whether it is morally/ethically rape or not. And IRAC-ing it does not add anything to the discussion unless you want to make ppl aware about the law to
a. have ppl change the law
b. let ppl know that it wasn't rape and therefore ok
-Seafire

 

Not attacking, just saying that I’m OK with deceiving people into having sex. How could that be seen as an attack on my character? But wait, there’s more “not attacking” to come!

 

(For those of you not in the legal profession, IRAC is an acronym for a method of doing legal analysis that stands for:

 

Issue: this is the question you are trying to answer. In this case, under NY law is obtaining consent for sex by disguising yourself as another person with whom that person would give consent an act of rape?

Rule: this would be all the legislation, case law (decisions of previous cases that were similar to this one), legal definitions, etc. that fit the facts above. kalinara dug that law up, which included a case where a twin pretended to be his brother to have sex with his brother’s girl friend and that was found not to be rape. (Yeah, I was a little surprised too.)

Application: combining the facts of the issue with the rules that you discovered on the topic. In this case, looking at the facts of the Chameleon case and comparing them to the facts of the twin case and the legislation.

Conclusion: your answer to the question posed in the issue. As the facts of the twin case are almost identical to the twin case, one would have to conclude that the Chameleon would not be found guilty of rape in NY; although, he would in other states and countries where the rape laws are written differently.)

 

Seafire continues:

Now as to why this is so upsetting, well for me its upsetting b/c I am a law student. I know that lawyers have a reputation for being amoral, immoral, arrogant, cold-hearted, greedy, while other professionals such as say doctors who probably prorportionally have the same amount of ppl who are amoral, immoral, arrogant, cold-hearted, greedy, are generally viewed more favorably.

This is 2x in as many days that I have seen lawyers/law students use either legaleese or legal reasoning in what I personally think are inappropriate ways. In this situation we are having lawyers trying to prove that this "rape" does not fit the criminal definition of rape and therefore isn't rape. Thereby we are absolving the Chameleon of having committed "rape".

 

Not attacking just suggesting that we're contributing to the reputation that legal people have for being amoral, immoral, arrogant, cold-hearted, greedy. And then Seafire ends with this gem:

 

In the end you never responded why this issue is being IRAC-ed and not other issues in comics. Its because at the heart of it many guys hate rape issues and automatically take the stance it wasn't rape. And in this case a lot of guys want to absolve Chameleon of rape. Oh it wasn't rape it was lie.

Okay so Chameleon came to Spider man in the form of MJ and had anal sex. Oh that's not rape, why its only a lie... Peter quit feeling violated. Its kind of cute when you get all upset over this thing. Aww look he's blushing. Poor Peter. Well at least you enjoyed it. And don't press any charges cause you are not going to win. What you want to kick his @$$. Ok Peter that is against the law, you are acting like a vigilante.. hold on let me get my law book out and IRAC it for you.

 

Totally not attacking my character, right?

Anyway, let me respond to Seafire’s question of why this issue is being IRAC-ed and not other issues in comics.

 

First, it was IRAC-ed because if you ask people involved in the legal profession something that looks like a legal question, we tend to respond with a legal answer. “Is this rape?” can be looked at as a religious question, a moral question, a semantic question, or a legal question. All are valid. Legal people, like me and kalinara (a woman who is generally opposed to rape in comics), will tend to give a legal answer.

 

Second, most murders and thefts in comics are pretty clearly crimes. There is no need to IRAC the Joker gassing people to death or the Black Cat steeling jewelry. The answer is clear. The thing speaks for itself.

 

Third, the premise that other issues are not IRAC-ed is absolutely false. Just off the top of my head I remember arguing all of the following comic book legal questions online:

 

1.  Would a confession obtained by Wonder Woman’s lasso be admissible in court? (I decided that it would not be, but given that she is not part of the government, other evidence that she obtained from the confession might be. Evidence based on that confession by agents of the government would probably not be admissible. However, it is entirely possible that a court might find that nothing obtained from the confession would be admissible, no matter who discovered it.)

 

2.  Was Wonder Woman guilt of the murder of Maxwell Lord? (Under laws in the US, I think she would have been. Although, Max made it clear that he would eventually get free to kill again, the affirmative defense of self-defense requires that the threat be eminent. Max was helplessly tied up, so the threat was not eminent so much as it was potential or even eventual. Wonder Woman would not be allowed to kill anyone she thought might pose a serious threat in the future, no matter how correct she might be)

 

3.  Would magical evidence be admissible in a comic book universe court? (The main opponent to magic evidence said that the thought it would be looked at as too suspect to be allowed. I think that magic is so common that it couldn’t be discounted entirely because there would be no way of clearly defining what “magical” even meant. For instance, could a person who had been raised from the dead be prevented from testifying because he was magically alive? Would elves be prevented from testifying? And then there was the problem of convicting people of committing crimes with magic. How could you convict a person of murder by magic if evidence of magic was not allowed in court? I decided that there could be no ban on magical evidence but that its value might be weighed in the same way other questionable evidence might be weighed.)

 

4.  Was Marvel’s Registration Act that sparked the Civil War storyline Constitutional? (I found that the government could draft people for all sorts of reasons, e.g. genetic traits (men but not women, and men registered but women didn’t), abilities (excluding people below a certain level of physical or mental fitness which would appear to allow them to draft people while excluding people below a level of super physical or mental fitness), skill (although I’d never heard of it, I knew there had to be law that would allow the govt. to draft people with medical skills because the govt. could draft regular folks and immediately give them those skills, and sure enough, there is; similarly there would in a comic book universe have to be a way that the govt. could draft people to fight threats that normal people couldn’t like magical or telepathic threats. Add in the fact that people who want to drive or use dynamite have to be registered to do so and it seems pretty likely that people who fly or summon volcanoes would also have to be registered. Some suggested that the deciding what was superhuman was too vague a concept, so it couldn’t be enforced and would be too vague to be Constitutional. I countered by saying that finding people disabled, i.e. significantly below norms of ability was Constitutional, so it seems that a similar system of finding people significantly above norms would also be. All in all, I couldn’t find any reason why people with superhuman abilities couldn’t be forced to register and be drafted into service. Having said that, it is illegal to use the military to arrest someone like a police force, so if super being were drafted into service, they would have to drafted into something that was not considered a branch of the military if you wanted them to be crime fighters. The question then becomes: can you draft someone into the FBI or CIA? And given that the Initiative would be battling mainly people breaking state laws, could these federal crime fighters be used? In short, it’s a very complex issue.)

 

Seafire’s conclusions of my character based on my legal analysis of a comic book are that I’m hoping to get away with rape and/or that I love rape loopholes. I’ll remind you that this is based entirely on my legal analysis of a comic book, not my rapey actions or any knowledge of my character beyond an IRAC of a comic book. Not only is this kind of judgmental attack on my character unjustifiable based on this scant evidence (which would also apparently stick to kalinara, a feminist woman who dislikes rape in comics), but one has to wonder why Seafire thinks I would support this loophole? Does Seafire think I’m hoping to develop shape sifting abilities so I can take advantage of this loophole? That I’ll get a clone or discover a long lost identical twin, who can pick up guys that I would fail at, and that I’d ditch my husband and piss off my clone/twin and his partner so I could get a piece of my clone/twin’s partner because I couldn’t be convicted of rape?

 

The staggering gall of Seafire’s accusation is mind-boggling rude.